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Show Notes:
Teaser
Intro Music.
Summary of podcast.
Contact info.
Items of note:
Get your tech question answered on the show. Send mp3 attachments of your question to geekcast@gmail.com and it will be featured on the “Ask A Geek” segment.
Spread the word about the Geekcast. Vote for the show at podcast alley and digital podcast and mention it in your blog.
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Tech news:
Microsoft has launched a video download service. The new video download service for playing back television content on Windows Mobile devices includes partners CinemaNow, MSNBC.com, and TiVo. According to another article from ployer.com, the service will require Windows XP, Internet Explorer 5 or higher, and Windows Media Player 10 or higher.”
Ehanced google searching with Firefox. Now Google’s faster than ever on Firefox and Mozilla browsers. When you do a search on these browsers, google instructs the browser to download the top search result in advance, so if you click on it, you’ll get to that page even more quickly.
Digg adds blogging features. Digg now has the ability to digg stories to your blog. Choose a story that you wish to blog, then click “blog”. Digg will instantly post that story to your website. You also have the ability to rewrite the blog post. This new feature is supported on the following blogs: Typepad, LiveJournal, Blogger, Moveable Type, and WordPress.
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How To: PC Spring Cleaning (Part 2)
With spring upon us, it’s a great time to clean out our computers not just on the harddrive, but also the physical case. This three-part segment will assist you in the areas to focus on for this project.
Cleaning the software:
- A year’s worth of installing, moving, uninstalling, and other file movements fragment a harddrive like nobody’s business. Run a full defrag overnight on any drives you have.
- Go through the Add/Remove Programs area in Control Panel and get rid of anything you don’t use. Lots of small utility and piggy-back programs can get installed when you’re not watching.
- If you don’t already use one, download a spyware checker (ad-aware, MS Anti-spyware, ect), fully update it and run a through scan of your system.
- If not done on a regular basis, run Windows Update and install any critical updates.
- Go through your My Documents folder to clean out any files old programs may have put there.
- Verify your anti-virus program is up-to-date, running in the background at all times, and run a full scan to make sure your box is clean.
- Ditch IE and give another browser a try. Hit up mozilla.org or opera.com to get Mozilla, Firefox or Opera. All of these are great browsers and will help close security holes for your system.
- Delete all Temporary Internet Files, and any files in the Temp folder in your Windows directory. The Disk Cleanup utility (Programs, Accessories, System Tools) will do this even better.
- If not done yet, set up a routine backup program to run at a set interval so your important files are backed up. You should also move important files to a DVD or CD. It’s even better to make an extra copy to keep off-site.
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Music: The Smashing Pumpkins- Slow Dawn
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Ask A Geek:
Sam asks: The first one is simple, can you recommend a nice, ideally free, RSS aggregator that works within Microsoft Outlook?
Sam, a good reader you can use is called RSS Popper and this is an add-in that integrates itself into Outlook. It is really simple and works great…. and yes it’s free.
RSS Popper: http://www.download.com/RSS-Popper/3000-9227_4-10371172.html?tag=lst-0-2
Can I also send mass SMS messages to members of my church?
Sam, you can use BulkSMS Text Messenger. This program is free. Sending SMS messages is not easy but you can check out a varity of programs at the link below.
http://www.download.com/3150-10440_4-0-1-0.html?qt=&author=&titlename=&desc=&dlcount=&daysback=&swlink=&gfiletype=&os=&li=49&dlsize=&ca=
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Hack: Change your iPod to display a number indicating battery life, instead of the icon.
If you would like to change your iPod’s functionality to display a number instead of the battery icon, then this is the hack for you. The number displays the voltage remaining but be aware it can fluctuate up and down, just like the battery meter.
First dock your iPod and open it up, making sure you can see hidden folders. Then create a blank file called _show_voltage in iPod_Control/Device/. Once that is done, you can dismount the iPod and you will see a voltage in numbers rather than the little icon display of voltage. To undo this hack, just remove the file.
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Contact info.
Outro music / sound clip.
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